


Thick as Thieves

by BID



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Childhood Friends, Dishonored 1, Getting Together, M/M, Not Beta Read, Post-Dishonored (Video Game), Rudshore Remix
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:06:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28400613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BID/pseuds/BID
Summary: When Corvo washes up in Rushore, half dead from poison, Daud has to choose what to do with him. But is there really a choice when this is his long lost childhood friend?
Relationships: Corvo Attano/Daud
Comments: 12
Kudos: 62





	Thick as Thieves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rising_Dawn_0v0](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rising_Dawn_0v0/gifts).



> A fill for my Secret Santa!

“Sir!” Thomas calls as he sprints into the office, startling Daud from his catnap, a necessary indulgence considering that proper sleep is evading him at all cost these days (or perhaps it’s the other way around). 

“The Lord Protector washed up in the floodwater, Anatole and Desmond found him. Poisoned, they say.”

“Dead?” Daud asks, not sure what answer he’d prefer, but he’s on his way anyhow. Thomas shakes his head, mask exaggerating the movement to look almost comical, but not hesitating as he follows Daud. 

“He’s alive, barely. He was put in the boat by someone else not far off from here, according to Anatole at least. Any further than the Distillery District should have landed him in the ocean. They’re hauling him up in the supply cage, it seemed the safest.”

Daud nods, repressing the exhausted sigh that leans against his ribs, and the urge to check his weapons over. 

They arrive to a commotion, and as Daud turns the last corner he sees the Lord Protector’s legs collapsing under him where he’d been standing in the cage. It only takes Daud a glance through the Void Vision to confirm that the man is unconscious, the eerie glow dimmer than that of someone awake, but not quite as much as the newly deceased. 

“Did you disarm him?” Daud demands, but Anatole shakes her head. 

Desmond elaborates, “It seemed better to get him up here first, besides, he’s not getting up any time soon.”

Daud yanks the door of the cage open, catching Attano with an arm under his chest before he hits the ground, and simply lies him out on the floor. “I wouldn’t bet on it, he’s marked-” Daud stips off Attano’s left glove to prove his point, causing more whispers in the ranks, but he simply goes about removing any weapons he can find, as well as the contents of Attano’s pockets, “-though he’s unlikely to have the same resistance as I do.”

He hands the weapons and ammunition over to Thomas, and whatever coin and food he finds to Dodge to be added to their own stores. Only then does he take the time to have a proper look at Attano’s face, and his general state. His skin is sickly pale and lips blue, the white of his eye- Daud pulls the eyelid down with his thumb on the cheek -is bloodshot and the pupil a tiny pinprick. 

But, as he turns the Protector's head with a hand to his chin, meaning to assess the other eye and his mouth, does something nag at him. Some recognition. Of course he’s seen prints and sketches of the man, not that any of them really do him justice, but it’s something else, something-

He ignores it and checks the other eye and when he sees it, recognition dawns on him. The dark brown iris is interrupted with a bright hazel stripe pointing straight down, the colour contrast nearly giving it the appearance of being yellow and he _knows it_. He knows that narrow stripe, but-

It can’t be. 

It _can’t_ be!

Daud doesn’t care what expression they might see on his face, if he is right- _if he is right_ \- but there’s a way to find out. There’s a way to prove him wrong (or right, he _cannot_ be right), there’s indisputable proof if he is right or wrong. 

His hands shake as he drops to his knees and flings his gloves aside, the thick leather far too unyielding to get the buttons of Attano’s coat open, to unclasp the chest armour and-

“Sir, what are you-”

“I need to check something,” Daud interrupts Thomas’ question. The top button of Attano’s shirt slides out of its place, the second, the third- Daud’s mouth runs dry when he catches a glimpse of black on olive skin -the fourth, and he spreads them apart, exposing a narrow V of Attano’s chest. 

Of his childhood friend. A boy in Karnaca he’d been so close with until Daud’s childhood had been ripped from him. 

The black ink under his skin doesn’t lie. The magpie is new, as is the coin it holds but the emblem on the coin is older. Much older, ink blurred into the skin, but atop the blur sits in clean, fresher lines the same symbol that Daud’s hands had pricked into his best friends’ skin when they were young and stupid. Using ink he’d stolen from his mother and needles from Gazza’s- _Corvo’s_. 

His palm feels glued to Attano’s chest, his other hand covering his own mouth as if to physically hold himself together. 

It was supposed to be the symbol of their gang that they would form when they were older, robbing nobles blind and ruling Karnaca’s streets in their childish imagination. They’d been twelve or so, he isn’t sure, the same as he hadn’t remembered his old friend’s name, just the nicknames they had given each other. 

“You know this, don’t you,” a voice rasps. Hoarse and brittle, weak, but Attano’s eyes are focused, knowing, as he stares into Daud’s, as he seems to stare straight into his soul. 

“Gazza,” is all Daud can reply. He hadn’t been forgotten. His friend wasn't killed and he hadn’t been forgotten the way he’d always been told over and over, it’s been drilled into his head until he’d believed it but this, this is proof. Truth. He’d been remembered, enough to maintain their stupid little secret, to bear it on his breastbone after all this years, a place of honour on a greater picture, in a way that implied it’d _meant_ something. 

Daud know’s he’d been terribly in love with his friend then, the innocent kind that children feel, and the memory of this feeling feels terribly out of place but somehow it jumps to the forefront of his mind anyhow. 

The Whalers around them are deadly silent. 

“Just get it over with,” Attano whispers. 

If it’s defeat or plain exhaustion in Gazza’s voice Daud can’t tell, but “No!” is the only answer either way. 

Gazza- Attano sighs, “Then give me an hour and I’ll be out of your way one way or another.”

“You’re not-”

“Ladro,” the sound of his oldest nickname from the lips of his oldest friend, no matter how quietly spoken, makes something in Daud’s chest squeeze, “they have my daughter. I will go through you if I must.”

“You won’t.”

Attano’s laugh, barely more than a hoarse chuckle, rings in Daud’s ears, “Shit as ever at gambling, Ladro.”

“And you’re still a reckless bastard,” Daud replies exasperated, but he can’t quite stop the smile that overtakes his face. Instead, he hauls Attano to his feet and pulls an arm over his shoulders to keep him there, “I meant that you won’t have to go through me.”

“Might puke on you though,” Attano warns, and Daud barely manages to let him lean over the edge of the building, and to pull his hair out of the way.


End file.
